1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera and a video filing system practicable therewith and, more particularly, to a camera for recording images in a silver halide sensitive type of film and a video filing system for reading high-resolution image data out of the film and recording them in an optical disk or similar recording medium.
2. Description of the Background Art
Generally, images recorded in a silver halide sensitive type of film by a camera have a resolution more than several times as high as the resolution of images available with, for example, a television receiver. A Photo-CD (Compact Disk) or similar video filing system is a recent achievement in the imaging art and practicable with a camera loaded with the above-mentioned type of film. The video filing system includes a film scanner or similar high-resolution device for reading images recorded in the film by the camera. The images read by the scanner are each converted to digital image data and then written to a large capacity recording medium, e.g., optical disk. This kind of filing system frees the filed image data from fading and allows them to be faithfully reproduced with high resolution. In addition, the filed image data can be sent to a remote station by a conventional data transmission or similar technology and reproduced with high resolution there. The video filing system with these advantages is an optimal approach to construct, for example, a video data base.
When the video filing system is applied to a video data base, the locations and dates of shots, objects shot, shooting conditions and other data relating to the shots are filed together with the image data and used as keywords in the event of searches. Such data relating to shots will be referred to as shot data hereinafter, as distinguished from image data representative of images. However, the problem with the conventional video filing system is that since only image data are usually stored in the film, the shot data or search data must be put down somewhere at the time of shooting. For example, the search data must be entered on a keyboard included in the system independently of the image data.
On the other hand, a camera capable of recording character data in a silver halide sensitive type of film having a magnetic recording area has recently been proposed, as taught in Japanese patent laid-open publication Nos. 204528/1992 and 246631/1992 by way of example. This type of camera has a storage storing character data or character fonts built therein. When particular keys or push buttons arranged on the camera are sequentially operated to select characters or a predetermined series of characters, character data matching a shot are written to the magnetic recording area of the film. The character data stored in the recording area may be read out and used as data for searching a video data base.
However, the conventional camera capable of recording character data in the film mainly relies on the user's manual operation. The camera, therefore, does not free the user from the troublesome manual input of shooting conditions which should play the role of a keyword in the event of a search of a video data base. For example, in the case of a photographic video data base, image data will be advantageously converted and reproduced if the name of a camera, the name, aperture and f-number of a lens, shutter speed, range, and the name and sensitivity of a film are entered together with a title attached to a scene and a shooting date as a keyword for searching the data base. Entering such various kinds of data on the camera or the keyboard of the system by hand is troublesome.